My last day at the shop was Labor Day. It was a “soft close” day, which meant that we semi-officially closed at five, but actually closed at 6, in theory granting us an extra precious hour to finish up projects and transfer as much of the arcane knowledge about the shop I’d acquired over the two years I’d been there over to the new marketing guy.

Needless to say, we did that for about forty-five minutes, and then had celebration beers.

A part of me misses it already, though.

This is the end of my first week at the new gig, doing technical writing (again), being a contractor (again), (frankly, making big-boy money (again)), and though I’m enjoying it about as much as anyone can enjoy a new job their first week, it’s a little strange to me how clean my hands are. No chain grease or weird tire scum or anything. No black sludge under my nails. Bizarre.

I’ve been kind of sick all week though, and so have not been riding or working on my own bikes (the Wednesday (fat bike) is in need of some love), so I’m sure the whole ‘clean hands’ thing won’t last, but still—

Getting back into the tech game is scratching a lot of good itches, and I’m excited (at least) for the novelty of it. I’m updating gems and node packages and all kinds of shit I haven’t really used in the last few years, re-learning professional communication strategies (i.e., not using as many bike and “rock and roll” emojis in my inter-office communication), and generally enjoying the greater freedom and flexibility afforded by a job that doesn’t require me to stop what I’m doing every so often to send out a rental bike, or fix a customer’s flat tire caused by a construction staple they picked up on the Charlestown Bridge.

So I’m not doing bikes for money anymore. Just for fun. Fuckin’ A.

(p.s., I will be reading at the Breakwater Reading Series next Friday, Sept. 20 at 7 in Harvard Square, if you’re in town and want to hear me clown about language for some minutes.)